When, however, Mr. Udny met in August at Jalalabad the Sipah Salar, Ghulam Haidar, the Amir’s representative, it seemed that the Amir intended to repudiate the Durand Agreement, so far as it concerned the Mohmand and Bajaur country; the proposed partition of Mohmand spheres of influence was rejected, it appearing that the Sipah Salar, on behalf of his master, claimed to exercise jurisdiction over the Mohmands right down to the Peshawar Valley. A solution of the difficulty was, however, found, and Colonel Sir T. Holdich has something to tell us about it in his _Indian Borderland_, where he writes: “It was impossible to give any effect to the agreement of 1893 without clearly ascertaining whether the geographical conditions of the country admitted of a direct interpretation. For the most part they did not. The boundary of the agreement was partly a geographical impossibility, but for a great part there was no obstruction in the way of carrying out its intention, except a new and varied interpretation which the Amir put upon the text of it.... A boundary was found between Afghanistan and the independent tribes to the east, from the Hindu Kush to a point in the Kunar Valley from whence it diverged to Lundi Kotal; and although at that point it had to be temporarily abandoned, and has remained undemarcated, enough was secured to lead up to a better geographical knowledge of the whole position, on the basis of which it was possible to effect a subsequent agreement which has rendered actual demarcation through the Mohmand country unnecessary,” in spite of the fact that no part of the boundary defined south of the Hindu Kush was the actual boundary of the agreement.
Of the Kunar River and Valley Holdich has a good deal to say, both in _The Gates of India_ and in _The Indian Borderland_. In the former book he writes that it was in the Kunar Valley that Alexander the Great “found and defeated the chief of the Aspasians. The Kunar River is by far the most important of the northern tributaries of the Kabul. It rises under the Pamirs, and is otherwise known as the Chitral River. The Kunar Valley is amongst the most lovely of the many lovely valleys of Afghanistan. Flanked by the snowy-capped mountains of Kashmund on the west, and the long level water-parting which divides it from Bajaur and the Panjkora drainage on the east, it appears, as one enters it from Jalalabad, to be hemmed in and constricted. The gates of it are indeed somewhat narrow, but it widens out northward, where the ridges of the lofty Kashmund tail off into low altitudes of sweeping foothills a few miles above the entrance, and here offer opportunity for an easy pass across the divide from the west into the valley. This is a link in the oldest and probably the best-trodden route from Kabul to the Punjab, and it has no part with the Khyber. It links together these northern valleys of Laghman, Kundar and Lundai (_i.e._ the Panjkora and Swat united) by a road north of the Kabul, finally passing southwards into the plains chequered by the river network above Peshawar. The lower Kunar Valley in the early autumn is passing beautiful. Down the tawny plain and backed by purple hills the river winds its way, reflecting the azure sky with pure turquoise colour—the opaque blue of silted water—blinking and winking with tiny sun shafts, and running emerald green at the edges.... The clustering villages are thick in some parts—so thick that they jostle each other continuously.... Higher up the river the valley closes until, long before Chitral is reached, it narrows exceedingly. Here, in the north, the northern winds rage down the funnel with bitter fury and make life burdensome. The villages take to the hill slopes or cluster in patches on the terraces at their feet.”